Ravenna, a Study eBook

And Odoacer sent the diadem and the purple robe, the
imperial ensigns, the sacred ornaments of the throne
and palace to Byzantium and received thence the title
of patrician.

VI

THEODORIC

We may well ask what was the condition of Ravenna
when the western empire fell and Odoacer made himself
king of Italy. And by the greatest of good fortune
we can answer that question. For we have a fairly
vivid account of Ravenna from the hand of Sidonius
Apollinaris who passed through the city on his way
to Rome in 467.

Ravenna had been the chief city of Italy during the
seventy years of revolution and administrative disaster
and decay which had followed the incursion of Alaric.
For the greater part of that period she had been the
seat of the emperors and of their government, and it
is perhaps for reasons such as these that we find,
after all, but little change in her condition.
She does not seem to have suffered much decay since
Honorius retreated upon her.

“It is difficult,” Sidonius tells us,
“to say whether the old city of Ravenna is separated
from the new port or joined to it by the Via Caesaris
which lies between them. Above the town the Po
is divided into two streams, of which one washes its
walls and the other passes through its streets.
The whole river has been diverted from its true channel
by means of large mounds thrown across it at the public
expense, and being thus drawn off into channels marked
out for it, so divides its waters, that they offer
protection to the walls which they encompass and bring
commerce into the city which they penetrate. By
this route, which is most convenient for the purpose,
all kinds of mechandise arrive, and especially food.
But against this must be set the fact that the supply
of drinking water is wretched. On the one side
you have the salt waves of the sea dashing against
the gates, on the other the canals, filled with sewage
of the consistency of gruel, are being constantly
churned up by the passage of the barges; and the river
itself, here gliding along with a very slow current,
is made muddy by the poles of the bargemen which are
being continually thrust into its clayey bed.
The consequence was that we were thirsty in the midst
of the waves, since no wholesome water was brought
to us by the aqueducts, no cistern was flowing, no
well was without its mud."[1]

In another letter we have a rather more fantastic
picture. “A pretty place Cesena must be
if Ravenna is better, for there your ears are pierced
by the mosquito of the Po and a talkative mob of frogs
is always croaking round you. Ravenna is a mere
marsh where all the conditions of life are reversed,
where walls fall and waters stand, towers flow down
and ships squat, invalids walk about and their doctors
take to bed, baths freeze and houses burn, the living
perish with thirst and the dead swim about on the
surface of the water, thieves watch and magistrates
sleep, priests lend at usury and Syrians sing psalms,
merchants shoulder arms and soldiers haggle like hucksters,
greybeards play at ball and striplings at dice, and
eunuchs study the art of war and the barbarian mercenaries
study literature."[2]